Hat do you think about, using the Ste Department what you think about communists in the state department . I think the committees in congress on the houseide and senate side should invtigate the charges of c■ peter scott eyman, that columnn representative Richard Dixon on the head hopper show, talking you opened your book Charlie Chaplin vs. America by saying, personally, i hope he goes and never comes back, he is as bad a citizen as we have in this country, as you well know. Was she writing to a u. S. Senator about Charlie Chaplin . Scott of letters to richard nixon. There are a number of files in the Nixon Library that contain nothg t mrs. To inform her. They had an interesting relationship. She had been a longtime supporter. She was constantly haranguing him via email about one problem or another that she crucial to e republic. Generally he would write ba asserting he agreed with everything she said and wished there were more citizens like her but then he would do absolutely nothing about what she wanted him to do. He■ treed her basically like an annoying aunt at thanksgiving who tells you how to dress and vote and what shows ton get intg conversation that will only end with bad feelings, you acquiesce and then go about your business because she will not be there. He would say yes, you are absolutely right, and the nothing would happen. And she seems to not notice that often. On the other hand, he did not really want to antagonize her because she had a vast readership through the l. A. Times syndicate and radio and Television Appearances so he had to keep her on his side, as it were, and he did. She never really wavered in her support for him publicly. Privately, she would complain when her letters and concerns were not dealt with. But it was an interesting for the way he adeptly handled a temperamental woman. Peter you describe Charlie Chaplin is the most prominent victim of the red scare. Why do you say that . Scott most of the people who got blacklisted were screenwriters, a few producers, and occasional director. No one in hollywood has ever cared about screenwriters. Producers and■w money. But Charlie Chaplin was more screenwriter, or director, he was all three and also an autonomous filmmaker who produced his own films and financed his own films and directed and compose the music scores for his own films. A one man picture. He did not produce a lot, one picture every four or five years but the fact remains he was a very peculiar denizen of hollywood in that he was not part of the studio system, he was part of a charliein system which was a factory of one. He was outside and inside the system. He was highly respected but no one really knew him, he did not go to a lot of parties, he was extraordinarily shy all his life, to very few people and needed very few people so he was simultaneously part of the mill should pick sureure industry and part a part of that. Peter he left the u. S. F years. Set the stage for us. What was going on in the world in 1952 . Scott in retrospect, it was the the blacklisting era, which began in 1947 wh the congressional hearing into a Hollywood Group of screenwriters , directors, producers. Ngress knew, put a call to constitute it the roster of thet party. So they knew who was in it. All the people who were components of the hollywood0 were all currently in the party as of 1947 or had been in the party and later resigned. So they could easily spring on them the question, are you now or have you ever been, when they knew the question in advance. By 1952 most of the people who had been prosecuted or persecuted were either unemploy in new york city, mexico, some had gone to london to find work to survive. But they were not working in the industry. Charlie chaplin was still working on his own picturethey h him politically because they had the roster and knew he had never been a member of the communist party and was not in fact a communist. That said, they still regarded him as a threat to the republic so inhe applied for a reentry permit because he was not a citizen, he was a resident alien. Whenever he left the country he had to apply for reentry permits. He was given the reentry permit by the ins he and his wife and their children not on board the Queen Elizabeth in 1952 to go to london. He had not been out of the country in 20 years and never really had a vacation in 20 years and he had a film opening, the last one he made in america, and he wanted to take his wife to show her the london where he had grown up in the 1890s and early 1900s. After the opening of the show in london they were going to go to paris for the opening and then take one or two months to arounn returned to america. They got on board the Queen Elizabeth in september 1952, one day out of new york he got a tereentry permit had been revokd and that if you wanted to get back into the unitede two face n investigation upon return in new york city. This was a shock he did not see coming. Everything he owned was in america, california, his stocks and bonds, studio, his film ■÷■library, which was the most valuable thing he owned, his house, everything. And he was in the middle of the atlantic. So it was a logistical crisis, a political crisis, emotional crisis for chaplin. So that is what happened. It took 10 years to come to fruition for the precedent that was established before they finally made a move to revoke reentry. Peter ■0 will get into details in a minute but the fbi had opened a file on him 30 years earlier, in 1922. Why . Scott he was regarded as insufficiently friendly, he had aftermath of world war i and was very good friends with an w max eastman who was a socialist. He gradually migrated to the center and then write right but he and chaplin were friends so by association, partly it was chaplin had insufficient enthusiasm■ the first production czar of hollywood made sense and ship censorship difficult. In the early 1920s there wa the arbuckle case, taylor murder , drug issues, drug addiction issues, so the industry felt they had to clean house and what could be better than to bring on a public figure of Great Respect , so they hired will hayes from the harding administration. At six figures a year at a time when no one was making six figures a year, he a figure of clean up your act and censorship and chaplin did not make films thatrequired sensorse beyond reproach, but he did not like the idea of■ a governmentr corporate mandated censorship of the film industry, he considered himself an artist and felt art should be free. Peter you write that he would frequently claim to be in an chivist, not in the bomb throwing sense, but in dislike of rules and preference for as much liberty as the law allowed, and maybe just a bit more. Scott emphaticall emphatically, yes. He to understand Charlie Chaplin yotand his childhood, which took place in london in a theatrical background. His father that 37. His mother was a less renowned performer diagnosed withsynthesd eventually went insane. Chaplin and his halfbrother sidneyere brought up essentially in workhouses and taught to read and write their. He had the equivalent of a fourthgrade education and by and by that time he lived on the streets so essentially chaplin had come to the heart knowledge that he could not depend on anyone other than himself and his brother. He did not trust a lot of people. He was not emotionally close with a lot of people. He simply held himself aloof from the camaraderie that took place in show business circles in england or america. He did not really trust a lot of people. You could count on one hand the number of people who trusted. Peter scott eyman■o, throughout your book Charlie Chaplin vs. America you reference how the poverty of his youth affected him throughout his life. a scott as i said, you cannot understand chaplin, he is an incredibly complex human being. His vision of his lost paradise with his childhood with his his father was gone very early. His mother, he adored. Everything about her. Even the truth about her. He knew she was syphilis, none e any difference, whether she contracted the disease from her husband, we have no way of knowing. But to her, he■u was the ballas, gravity. So the sudden obliteration of that by her madness was a terribly destructive act and as a result, he was in a sense, his maturation was cut off very early and he held himself aloof from what would be regarded as normal friendships and relationships. Peter you quote chaplin is saying to judge the morals of all the family by commonplace standards would be as erroneous as putting a thermometer in boiling water. Scott eyman come out when he arrived in america in 1910, he was the most stunning rise of any 20thcentury performer. How did he achieve success so early . Scott do not know that he ever fully understood it because by the time he was 21 yearsldthf himself and focus of his emotional life was about deprivation of his childhood. So he had this weird duality about consciousness. ■ohe extraordinarily famous and wealthy. On the other, he thought of himself as a deprived child. I am sure a psychologist say ths exactly what happens with someone who has that kind of childhood and uses it as fuel and motivation to achieve, to get out of squalor. Had to him, he struggled with it basically the first half of his life, i think, until his last and successful marriage. Which gave him the security and emotional foundationhat he had always needed and desperately wanted. Peter and that was to own a chaplin. How character evolves and what did it represent little tramp what did it represent . Scott he made a good living in the theater in vaudeville and played basically a comic theatet famous act and he was extremely successful. Stan laurel was his understudy. They roomed together for several years. And laurel said people thought he was strange later on. He was strange then. He did not really mingle with the other actors, the other comedians. He was off by himself reading books. He would not show upance and 10 minutes before the curtain rose when they realized chaplins not here, where is charlie, stan, put on your makeup, laurel would slap on his makeup and a couple minutes before curinin would saunter in without a care in the world, put on his makeup, take his position, the curtain would rise. He had absolute selfconfidence in his professional skills. He did not sweat, going to be good tonight, will they love me . He did not have the usual performers anxiety. He understood that on some level he had access to the audience in tors dont. Most actors do not. He was very successful in vaudeville. In 1912, max saw him on stage and thought he was hilarious and made a mental note that the next time he needed a lead comedian, he would hire chaplin and the next year he did for 475 a month, really good money in 19initially the contract 191. Initially the contract on offer was for a year but with a preview so that he could be let go with two weeks notice. Peer chaplin rejected that contract and held out foyear anh was begrudgingly signed. So even at age 23, he was very sure of himself, his skill set, of what that skill set could earn him as a professional. He went to for senate and he was stunned because ihe bd much older thaheas. He walked on studio, he was young and quite handsome. He was told to put on plenty of makeup and throw something together. As chaplin stole told the story, he went into the proper room and put together a costume for the tramp in 45 minutes. The derby hat, a little make hik older. Oversized shoes. He made everything a contradiction. The coat was too tht, the shoes were too large, the hat almost fit, he just sortfther an stage and they were shooting the film and people started to laugh and that was it. He stuck with the character for the next 30 years. Peter his fame grew so fast he bon, he founded United Artists with douglas fairbanks, mary pickler mary pickford. You manyov his first year at keystone he had made several movies but they were shorts. Just shorts until 1921. He made the kid, his first feature, ind him not to do it, you can make a couple of shorts a year but a feature will take you much longermuch more weightt and what if it flops, you will go to a crashing heart. But he always followed his instincts. He placed great trust in instinct. He thought he needed to grow and he could not wear the character without deepening the narratives , deepening the situations in which the tramp is placed. In the kid he basically put him with a small child and gave him responsibility forsmall child. It is the key transitional film of his career because up until then the tramp is kind of a1o to legged to society in general. He is not above pinching girls, aggression, damage, kind of the creature from the it, actually. With the kid where h being, when he cares about more than hims the character enters a transition and there is a huge difference between the post kid tramp and prekid tramp. More concerned about saving other people that he is saving himself. Prek had, he is more concerned about saving himself. In 1940, the great dictator movie came. High watermark forfo your book, chaplin had been reading about hitler, watching newsreels about hion0m, wonriresemblance. They were the same size, had the same mustache, and lets face it, a similar world power. Besides that, they were born only four days apart. Is the great dictator and antinazi film . Scot overtly from the moment he considered it. He would not have made it otherwise. It was of great political and psychological courage on his part. No one what the film made. Hollywood did notant it made. They started filming in september 1939. Hollywood did not start producing antinazi films fo anr. The American Public was isolationist in 1939, as was congress, and they would continue to be isolationist until the japanese bombed pearl harbor in december. Tide. The British Foreign office did not want it made. Neville chamberlain in the Prime Ministers Office was trying to placate hitle it was not working. Chaplin believed that you cannot with an authoritarian psychotic, you can only defeat them or put them down with a bad dog. The weapons he had to work with those of the weapons he chose to use. Peter of the film Charlie Chaplin broke character and gave a little speech. Charlie chaplin i am sorry. I do not want to rule or conquer anyone. I shall like to help everyone if possible, black men, whites. We all want to help one another. We want to live by happiness, not misery. We do not want to hate and despise one ano. In this room there is in this world there is room for everyone in the good earth is rich. The way of life can be free and beautiful. And yet greed has poisoned mens souls, filled the world with ■÷ shall bloodshed. Peter scott eyman, what was the impact of that moment in the film . Scott it was the first time the audience had heard Charlie Chaplin speak. He made a silent film in■s 1936, and everyone thought he was crazy, because it was 10 years after silent films were dead. He sang a song at the end of the movie, modern times, n had heard him speak. In the great dictator there was a great deal of public fascination with what charlie chliunded like. He got over it very quickly because hplays two parts in the film, a leader and a jewish barber. As the jewish barber he only speaks in monosyllables. As the leader, it is babbling and doubletalk all the time, dramatic doubletalk. So at the end of the movie when he drops the veil and steps basically out of character as the jewish barber and speaks as charlie moment of thunderous drama because he was speaking not as an, he was speaking as a universally regarded figure morality, and he labeled over the speech. It was always going speech and g on that speech basically since he worked on the film. He put it off and put it off, shooting his speech, until very close to the end of production. X or eight takes over two days and that was it. Peter fdr reached out to him fdr reached out to him before the film. Because there was a great deal of back and forth chaplin make the film, would he, etc. There is a letter in the book from jack warner to chaplin. Warner had just come out of a meeting in the oval office with roosevelt and roosevelt had brought up chaplins film about dictators. Because there was publicity in the papers about if or not he would make it, should he make it or not. The president told jack warner he certainly hoped the film was made and that he believed it would do a great deal of good and warner in the letter rights to chaplin him, if the president thinks it is a good idea, i certainly hope you go ahead with did not offer to fint or distribute it, but the warner bros. Were there this time one of the few companies that were engaged in making antifascist films, so for a brief moment in hollywood, they were on the same page as chaplain. Hence the support of letter. Peter scott eyman was the great dictator a commercial success . Scott a great commercial success all over the world, remarkably so, because most of europemas already fastest at that point. France was gone, italy, austria, germany of course. All that was leftengland. The film was extraordinarily successful in america and england. Scott no, but he was often accused of being jewish by antisemite and he never denied y denying it, he would be giving aid and comfort to the enemy by the application that it was something not to embrace. So he would simply let the charges pass. But no. Peter the subtitle of your book is when■e arts, sex, and politis collide. It was in the 1940s that he met a woman named joan barry. Who was she . Scott she w 823yearold who was previouslyshe got it into ht she should be in movie so she got a letter of introduction, went to hollywood, met a few people, one of them was charlie up a relationship. It lasted slightly more than a year. Chn dramatic possibilities and signed her to a contract. Her behavior became increasingly erratic. She did not show up for acting for drama school in hollywood and she began cutting class. Chaplin was very serious about work. You had to do the job. You had to learn your trade. That put him off as well as some of her erratic behavior. They split up once, twice, finally she went back to oklahoma for a time and then came back to hollywood and said she was pregnant and he was th father. Chaplin did the math. He realized he could not possibly be the father. So he refused to make a settlement on her. She went to hopper, who blew the story wide open,asically pregnaa state a complete for chaplin. Chaplin knew it was not true. The government began a prosecution based on a law passed in the early part of the century■d banning taken women across state lines formmoral purposes, basically to stamp out prussic illal prostitution. Then came the paternity trial. He willingly took a blood test that proved he was not the father and the jury found against him. The reason was at that point in california, 13, was not dispositive. Five years later, the case would have been■v in 1943 the jury found against him largely because of the portrayal of chaplin in the media by people like hopper and ed sullivan and other conservative columnists as an outofcontrol libertine. So he lost the case. He appealed and the appeal was turned down. So for the next 18 years he had to pay Child Support for a child that was n at the same time the paternity suit was getting underway, he married the daughter of eu oneill. She was 18, he was eight childrn together. At the time it seemed unspoken confirmation of him as a libertine and it probably worked against him in terms of the jurys decision to make him the father of that child. Peter the fact that joan barry reportedly had■ two abortions s well, did that play a role in the diminishment of his reputation . Scott it was not widely printed. It never came up in the trial because for it to come up in the trial it wouldve opened up se■3xu lawyers did not want her sexual history examined closely so it did not come up in the trial. In terms of the fbis examination of her and she claimed she had two abortions that chaplin paid for but they never prosecuted her on for reasons i can only guess. It simply did not come up at the trial. I have no doubt it was a factor in the deliberations about what to do with Charlie Chaplin because they took her at her recanted all most all of her later testimony, all of her testimonyater. Peter was J Edgar Hoover following Charlie Chaplins reputation and progress . Scott like a bloodhound. Hoover had obsession is too strong a word but lets say he had a very refined interest in Charlie Chaplin. His mo regarding chaplin was there would be a flurry of telegrams fromto the l. A. Fbi office, please check out Charlie Chaplin. And■xally due what would basically do what they asked him to do and thennd then it would start all over and l. A. Office would check Charlie Chaplinafter world war. Office started dragging their feet because they had, by 1947, basicay the enre Security Apparatus of the u. S. Had at one time or another gone to Charlie Chaplin. His mail was open, surveillance on his house, employees interviewed, his taxes both corporate and personal had been goneanything they could get himr and they did not find anything. His taxes, he paid than he paid more than his fair share. He never had any flaming radicals to the house, or very few, they came up with nothing. So the office began dragging their heels because here we go again. And hoover would richard hood d was very good and well connected with the movie industry. His main source was settled be demille, one ofrmants within ho. And he had been quizzed about chaplin and the interesting thing about demilles comments about chaplins he said chaplin is an artist, regarded as cheap, he is not part of the hollywood community, he is off by himself all the time. ■■but he and chaplin were not friends, they did not go to parties together or anything like that, but had lent to chaplin his weekend getaw place, outside of l. A. On a couple of occasions. So they clearly knew each other and were friendly and demille did not tell hood this. Interesting. But hood basically began paying less and less attention to Charlie Chaplin because there were all of these other authentic communists in california they could easily get goods on. Chaplin essentially was not a communist, which at that point was the focus of hoovers investigation. Peter soopper, ed sullivan, american legion, cardinal spellman, were they ablto commercial success and reputation . Scott without question. When you are looking at 10 years of disinformation, on a weekly or monthly basis, andn did not resd not have responded to because it was a ploy, he was pilloried for not being a citizen . America was full of people who were not citizens living in new york, los angeles, especially in e. A lot of them were successful, they were english, but no one pilloried them. He convenient because he was regarded as politically dicey, sexually dangerous, so he was singled out for the fact that he never became a citizen whereas others know where was ever said abou them. Peter you quote chaplin in yo book, i being told who to kill and what to die for and all in t name of patriotism. The ct is, i am no patriot. Not for moral or intellectual reasons alone, but becausi have no feeling for it. How can one tolerate patrti when 6 million jews re murdered in its name . Some might say that was in germany, but cells lie dormant n every nation. Scott yes. His friend max eastman made a very good point. He said, chaplin was born in england and became rich and famous in america. And he never became a citizen. What the people who hated him did not understand washahe had d become rich and famous in england, he would not have n english citizenship, either. As far as he was concerned, nation of origin happens to be where you are when your mother gives birth. Certain kinds of food, the atmosphere of the ld he was sent certain kind of things but in terms of things like the monarchy, he was ant■nao. He talked about once when he was a child he could not cross the street because some royal person in a carriage was driving by so they were holding all the pedestrian traffic and he talked about how that enraged that someone would have the right of way on ordinary people were not able to walk across the street. That carried over. He was antimonarchist in england antikneejerk patriotism in america. That is just the way he was constructed psychologically. Peter lets return to952. A quote, trumans attorney general james the granaries action was a culmination of yetargeting the private sexual behavior and public political sympathies of the most dangerous brand of dissident, a beloved, popular artist. What did the attorney general do . It was hoovers support [inaudible] what chaplin did not know at the time was he wasthe middle of the atlantic after he had the telegram was that a week after the reentry permit wase the ins had a meeting and came to the firm conclusion that if chaplin came back and contested, they would have to let him in the country because he had never been convicted of a miemeanor, nothing. Generally that was the vehicle by which the fbi would get rid of mafiosi they did not want, they had to convict al capone on tax evasion, then they could support th felony. Chaplin had never been convicted of anything. So they did not have legal justification, forget moral justification, they had no legal justification to kick him out of the country and if he had heariy would have had to let him back in. But chaplin was furious. He was infuriated, livid■ for years about the banishment. The last thing he was going to do was knock on the door and asked to be invited back to a party he had been thrown out of. So he got to england, opened his film that was a enormous hit all over europe and had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. No small decision when you are he probably figured he had another 10 or so years to go. As it happened, she live to age 88. He thought about moving to italy, he thought about england, and his brother sidney who he adored and trusted, he was only close to two mhis life, sidney andglas fairbanks seniwh died young in 1939 and chaplin never really had a best friend after Doug Fairbanks died, his closest male friend was his brother sidney had sidney suggested switzerland or france. Sidney lived tax reasons because sidney was paranoid about money at always coming up witwi schemes to avoid paying taxes. He suggested switzerland and chaplin had not really thought about it. He knew the country slightly but head never given any serious thought to moving anywhere other than hollywood. So he thought about it and thought about it after the banishment, heought a manor house and lived■q tre for the rest of his life with his family. Peter after he left the u. S. And 1952, what happened to his studio and holdings . Scott ■u his money, tax, bonds, one of the things i love to find taken by research in the chaplin arives w of his investments in 1952, his stock and bond portfolio. It confirmedt was the stock and bond portfolio a wall street trader would have had in 1952. Peter stops at at t, kodak, bank of america, woolworths, etc. Scott yes. Trueblue patriotictfolio that would kick up 3 or 4 a year reliably. Professionally assembled portfolio. And tobacco companies, and chaplin did not smoke. Ghter] the idea of him as a radical leftist with a stock portfolio with that is hilarious. Anyway, everything he owned was in california. Luckily his wife oona was aerict back and closed out the investment account and brought them back with her, some of the money of course could be wired, some could be wired to europe. His brother basically handled the sale of the studio and the hardware within the studio, the hardware you need to make movies, sidney handled that. Sidney when not living in nice woli in palm springs, sometimes in florida, he had a trailer and would around to wherever it was sunny. He was a sun worshiper and ardent nudist. A genuine eccentric. By comparison, charlie was straight down the middle. Respe. It was a process that took some years. In 1955, the irs came after him for back taxes based on earnings. Country and september 1952 and they taxed him for moneych i tha certain amount of gall. [laughter] and he settled. He wrote a check for the taxes because he did not want it hanging over him. All this is going on while he is resettling in propaganda, the antichaplain propaganda continued published. Astonishing stories. My favorites were that she was in palestine with the jewish radicals helping to found israel, to kill british soldiers inne in 1947 when israel was founded. The most insane one came after he was after he left the country after it was claimed he was going to adopt the children